Tuesday, November 15, 2005

How to Lose the War (And the Senate)

Senate Republicans cave -- disgracefully. And call for seeing the President's "strategy" for withdrawing from Iraq.

The President has laid out his strategy -- it's called "victory." Senators do not help by reacting to (and thereby implicitly validating) the bizarre paranoia emanating from their political adversaries.

Go on, Republican senators. Hand a road map to Zarqawi. Tell him how long he has to hold on before America will desert the Iraqis like they did the South Vietnamese (or at least indicate that political restlessness exists to such a degree that such desertion is eventually almost inevitable). And then watch as the US loses Iraq, and is handed a defeat in the war on terror. And don't think that the Democrats will take any responsibility for their part in such a debable -- just look at how they're lying about the reasons for their vote to wage war in Iraq . . . the same war they're now working hard to lose.

Senate Republicans instead need to see that our progress in the Iraq war is better publicized and that the President is better defended from the crazy notion that he lied about intelligence to lure us into war. Above all, blurring Republican and Democratic messages on the war on terror is nothing but a sure road map to defeat -- most importantly, in the war on terror, and then, deservedly, on the domestic political front.

There is almost nothing that would tempt me ever to stay home on Election Day. But watching Republicans become complicit in losing the war on terror would be one of them.

4 Comments:

Well said. I am angry in the extreme over this. Here is the text of an email I sent to my Senator, Mitch McConnell:

Dear Senator,

I am extremely upset that the Republicans in the Senate have voted to approve a measure asking the President to give an account of the war effort in Iraq.

I cannot believe that the President's very own Party would do this. Below I have copied the text of an email I sent to Senator Frist. Please allow that text to communicate to you my strong (more than strong) displeasure with the actions of the Republican Senators.

***

I am HIGHLY upset at the Republican leadership for caving in to Democratic opposition to the war in Iraq. I cannot believe that my President's very own Party has given the Democrats leverage in their attack on our war efforts.

Voting to ask the President to report to Congress periodically on the status of the war effort may seem like a defensible compromise to you. But the Democrats and the New York Times have already begun to spin this as an erosion of support for the war effort.

My God, man! We have men and women risking their lives to free millions of people against a brutal enemy whose only viable weapon is propoganda. Thanks to you, their arsenal has been re-stocked.

I will immediately contact my two Senators, McConnell and Bunning, and ask that they vote to change GOP leadership in the Senate at the first available opportunity!

***

When will the Republicans in the Senate grow a backbone and stand up to the Democrats? When will the Republicans in the Senate begin to act like a Majority Party? When will I once again be able to point to Republican Senators with pride? What has happened to you?

I don't know what can be done now. But I encourage you to take immediate steps to reverse this dreadful action.

As I read the linked quote, it does not appear that the Senate is calling for a timetable for withdrawal.

If the President's exit strategy is "victory", then isn't the Congress, which authorizes and funds the war, and answers to the American people, entitled to ask the Administration what "victory" looks like and how well we are achieving it?

A Senator's job is to support the country, not the Administration, as well as to represent the interests of his/her electorate. With regard to politics, a trip to the woodshed might not be a bad thing for the Administration's standing and popularity.

Conservatives helped save the President from himself with the Harriet Miers fiasco. I wonder if Senate Republicans might not be doing the same thing here.

This is ridiculous. Maybe I missed the part in history where FDR calmed the public by letting them in on the D-Day invasion plan. Term limits, term limits, term limits, term limits, term limits, term limits...